Mother Teresa, Revisited

December 2, 2007

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

PRAYER:

Let us listen to some words of Jesus and see if we can hear within them the voice of a life-giving spirit. What good does it do you, he asked, if you gain the whole world and lose your soul?

Our soul. Our center. That place inside where we need to feel the presence of a life lived with integrity and courage, in the service of high ideals that bless the lives of ourselves and others.

That’s also what Jesus thought of as the narrow path that few would ever want to take, because it isn’t very attractive or seductive. Yet it asks us, as these words from Jesus ask us, to measure our lives in a different currency than the world fawns over. The currency that matters is how we respond to the sacred worth of ourselves and others – whether we try to develop these gifts life has offered.

The reward, Jesus thought, is the deep feeling that we are serving life, and life is returning the favor. The other meaning is that if we can not find that inner feeling of worth, we may not be serving the right gods at all,

Surely these things are right – not because Jesus said them, but because they resonate at such deep levels within people in all times and places.

Let us listen to the words that tell us life is to be honored and empowered, and that our reward for serving life in this way is that we will grow a soul that offers us comfort and love that can not be taken away.

Just this could transform our lives – just this. Amen.

SERMON: Mother Teresa, Revisited

This is the story of a woman who wanted to serve God by helping people. She did it, felt the presence of God, and was happy. But then something odd and I think tragic happened. She answered a new call, which took her in a different direction. She followed this new call for 49 years, becoming one of the most famous women in the world, raising hundreds of millions of dollars, winning a Nobel Prize and the adoration of nearly the whole world. But she lost her soul in doing it, because she was no longer serving a God who could make her or anyone else whole. That’s my understanding of what happened to this sainted woman, after reading the controversial and disturbing new book called Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, just published a few months ago, and containing for the first time some of her private writings.

In a way, her story strengthens my own faith, though not in a way of which she would have approved. So this is an odd sort of sermon. Part biography, part very dark confession by Mother Teresa, and then my own theological assessment of what happened to her, what it meant for the world, and what it might mean for us. She’s such a famous saintly figure, I don’t expect we’ll all agree on this.

Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu (Agnes Gon’-cha Bo’-ja-tswee) (August 26, 1910 – September 5, 1997) was an Albanian Roman Catholic nun. She first felt a call to work with the poor when she was 12. She became a nun and moved to Loreto, India at 18 (p. 14). She taught in the school at Loreto for eighteen years, was much admired, very satisfied and feeling the presence of God, just like it’s supposed to work.

In 1946 she had what she experienced as direct mystical communication from Christ, telling her to start a mission of charity working with the poorest of the poor. She mostly referred to these communications as the “Voice” until her superiors recoiled from the thought that she might be hearing voices. But she thought she had heard the voice of Christ.

She said she tried to talk Jesus out of this new calling, but he said, “I want Indian Missionary Sisters of Charity – who would be my fire of love amongst the very poor – the sick – the dying – the little street children – The poor I want you to bring to me – and the Sisters that would offer their lives as victims of my love – would bring these souls to Me” (p. 49). That odd idea of being a victim of Jesus’ love would become one of the deepest facets of her life and work.

It took two years to get approval from Rome, and in 1948 she began work in Calcutta with her new Missionaries of Charity. She would work with them for the next 49 years, building this into a worldwide phenomen with over 4,500 nuns working in more than 130 countries.

Few people have ever understood just what the purpose of her work really was. From the start, it was a proselytizing mission to win souls for Jesus, so more poor people could go to heaven – and to serve the Catholic Church. Her theology was among the most reactionary in the Catholic Church, absolutely against any ideas of women’s rights or social and economic reform.

She was not setting up places to provide good medical care or pain relief for suffering and dying people, and would sometimes tell people that the more they suffered, the closer they were to Jesus. She believed this as deeply as she believed anything. She wanted herself and her nuns to provide them with care and love as they were dying, and her biases come through some of the stories she told. See how these three excerpts strike you:

“We picked up [a man] from the drain, half eaten with worms, and we brought him to the home: “I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.” And it was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that, who could die like that without blaming anybody, without cursing anybody, without comparing anything. Like an angel.” (p. 292)

“The poor are bitter and suffering because they have not got the happiness that poverty should bring if borne for Christ”.” (p. 92)

“The work for AIDS keeps growing fruitfully. No one has died without Jesus. – In New York already over 50 have died a beautiful death.” (p. 309)

She seemed either oblivious or indifferent to politics, economics, or any of the causes of poverty – certainly including overpopulation and the disempowerment of women.

She had a genius for organizing and also, as she became a celebrity, for attracting big money. No one knows how much. She didn’t keep it in India, which requires detailed identification of charity funds. One former worker in her New York office said the New York account alone contained about $50 million. (from interview with Christopher Hitchens by Matt Cherry in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 16, Number 4)

The money did not go toward buying good medical equipment or training: her centers looked as impoverished at the end of her life as they had before all the hundreds of millions of dollars were received. It seems that the money was simply spent to start more of these Missionaries of Charity centers all over the world. Numerous medical journals reported on the primitive condition of these centers, the fact that hypodermic needles were washed out in cold water and reused, that pain medication was not given to suffering people, and that these were simply places for people to die, but not to be healed. She told her nuns that these poor existed so she and the nuns could earn credits with God.

Along the way, she also attracted some rich but sleazy people who wanted to buy her public endorsement in return for donations to her mission, and she seemed eager to oblige. After donations from the Duvalier family – Duvalier was the brutal dictator of Haiti – she spoke publicly about how much the Duvaliers loved the poor. After Charles Keating gave her more than a million dollars of the money he had stolen from his investors in the Lincoln Savings and Loan swindle, she wrote to the prosecutor’s office praising his love of the poor, saying she could not believe he could have done anything wrong, asking for forgiveness for him. Then the story took an interesting turn.

The deputy District Attorney of Los Angeles County answered her, explaining the process by which Keating had cheated huge numbers of poor people out of their life savings, and then pointed out that in their audits they discovered that quite a lot of the money he had stolen he’d given to Mother Teresa. He said, now that you know the money was stolen, when are you going to give it back? She never answered. (from interview with Christopher Hitchens by Danny Postel, 9-15-98)

She and Princess Diana formed a well-publicized relationship, and after Diana and Prince Charles divorced, she was asked about Princess Di’s divorce. She said, yes, they’re divorced and it’s very sad but I think it’s all for the best; the marriage was not working, no one was happy and I’m sure it’s better that they separate.

But two months earlier, Mother Teresa had been campaigning in Ireland to pressure voters into keeping their constitutional ban on divorce. The Irish Catholic church threatened to refuse to remarry divorced women. There were no exceptions to be allowed: it didn’t matter if you had been married to an alcoholic who beat you and sexually assaulted your children, you were not going to get a second chance in this world or the next. And that is the position that Mother Teresa supported. (from interview with Christopher Hitchens by Matt Cherry in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 16, Number 4)

When the Union Carbide corporation flew her to Bhopal, India after the accident in their chemical plant there killed thousands of people, she was asked by the media for a comment on this tragedy, and she kept saying “Just, forgive, forgive.” So under her values, it was O.K. to forgive Union Carbide for its deadly negligence, to forgive the Duvaliers for the brutality and murder of their Haitian dictatorship, and Charles Keating for stealing the life savings of thousands upon thousands of poor people. But for a woman married to an alcoholic child abuser in Ireland who has ten children and no one to look after her, there is no forgiveness in this life or the next one. But there is forgiveness for Princess Diana. (from Matt Cherry’s interview with Christopher Hitchens in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 16, Number 4.) She worked with the poor and forgotten, but her special dispensations seemed only to be for the rich and famous.

You can see why someone like Christopher Hitchens would attack her in print as a fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud, charges he made in his 1997 book about her. He said that what she loved was not the poor, but poverty. Poverty kept providing her with poor people to let her nuns earn credits with God, tending to them without doing anything to improve their lot.

Some of you probably have your own opinions of whether what she did was good or bad. But I want to consider it from a theological perspective, which seems to me the most interesting way to look at this simple yet complex religious woman’s life.

Theologians say that the quality of the gods or ideals we serve has a lot to do with the quality and depth of satisfaction we can find in life. A first century Christian theologian once attacked the pagan worship of statues of gods, saying they were all made of wood, and “we become what we worship.” I’ve always thought there was a lot of insight in that statement that we become what we worship. Other theologians say that only real gods – really high and life-giving ideals, in other words – can make you feel whole and fulfilled, and that serving lesser ideals – or idols – will drain your soul until you are empty inside. For theology to have any relevance at all to real life, what we serve has to make a qualitative difference in your sense of satisfaction and happiness in life – meaning that what you serve will catch up with you: a variation on the ancient Greek saying that “Character is destiny.”

In some ways – and perhaps this will sound unkind – Mother Teresa comes as close as anyone I’ve read to Oscar Wilde’s story about the portrait of Dorian Gray. You’ll remember this was the man who lived a destructive life, yet always looked young and happy. But up in his attic was a portrait of him that showed the progressive degradation of his soul. Mother Teresa’s “portrait” was inside her soul rather than in her attic, revealed for the first time in the recent publication of her private writings (Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, 2007) but – well, I’d rather read you some of her confessions so you can hear for yourself. I’ll warn you that this is pretty sad and dark stuff – and for most who hear it, probably very surprising.

In 1953 she began sharing the description of her inner darkness with her spiritual advisor, then later with several other priests over the next forty years. These quotations are taken from letters to several of the priests. I should add that for several decades, she repeatedly begged these priests to destroy all her letters to them. As far as I can tell, they all kept them, and allowed them to be published in this book, saying the letters showed the very human struggles she endured. It strikes me as an immense violation of confidentiality, though I can’t get too righteous about this because I’m glad people have a chance to read them. Here are some of the things she wrote to her spiritual mentors and confessors:

“there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started “the work” [with the Missionaries of Charity]” (p. 149).

“Pray for me – for within me everything is icy cold. It is only that blind faith that carries me through for in reality to me all is darkness” (p. 163).

“There is so much contradiction in my soul. Such deep longing for God – so deep that it is painful – a suffering continual – and yet [I’m] not wanted by God. Pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything” (pp. 169-170).

“If you only knew what goes on within my heart. Sometimes the pain is so great that I feel as if everything will break. [My] smile is a big cloak which covers a multitude of pains” (p. 176).

At one point, her spiritual director suggested she write a letter to God. She did, and then shared it with him. (Father Picachy, 3 July 1959) In it, she said: “Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The child of your love – and now become as the most hated one – the one You have thrown away as unwanted – unloved. I call, I cling, I want – and there is no One to answer – no One on whom I can cling – no, No One. Alone. The darkness is so dark – and I am alone. Unwanted, forsaken. The loneliness of the heart that wants love is unbearable. Where is my faith? – even deep down, right in, there is nothing but emptiness & darkness. So many unanswered questions live within me – I am afraid to uncover them – because of the blasphemy. If there [is a] God, — please forgive me. When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven – there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me – and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul” (p. 187).

“They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God – [that] they would go through all that suffering if they had just a little hope of possessing God. In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss – of God not wanting me – of God not being God – of God not really existing” (p. 192).

“Now Father – since 1949 or 1950 [I have had] this terrible sense of loss – this untold darkness – this loneliness – this continual longing for God – which gives me that pain deep down in my heart”. There is no God in me. When the pain of longing is so great – I just long & long for God – and then it is that I feel – He does not want me – He is not there. Heaven, souls – why these are just words – which mean nothing to me. My very life seems so contradictory. I help souls – to go where? Why all this? God does not want me. Sometimes I just hear my own heart cry out – “My God” and nothing else comes” (p. 210).

“People say they are drawn closer to God seeing my strong faith. Is this not deceiving people? Every time I have wanted to tell the truth – “that I have no faith” (p. 238).

She came to see her suffering as a sharing in Christ’s redemptive suffering (p. 215). This was her solution: suffering, being a victim of God’s love, is what brings you closest to Jesus. No wonder she wouldn’t give pain-killers to her suffering and dying people.

At one point she wrote that the physical situation of the poorest of the poor – left in the streets unwanted, unloved unclaimed – was the true picture of her own spiritual life (p. 232).

That’s enough of a sketch to get a feel for this simple yet complex woman. She had immense dedication, energy, skill and stamina, this modern saint who became the most famous woman in the world. Yet all the while she carried within her a soul like the portrait of Dorain Gray. Her suffering and desolate soul needed to hear the one thing she could or would not hear. That was the Voice that said God was no longer present within her because since starting the Missionaries of Charity, she had stopped serving a God of love and healthy empowerment. It was simpler when she had served as a teacher, because education empowers people, and can lead them toward more possibilities and fullness in life. But to work as a missionary in the service of an extremely conservative and reactionary theology is to reduce people’s horizons, rather than enlarging them.

She fought vigorously against the only thing proven to help reduce overpopulation and its resulting suffering: the education and empowerment of women, to give them options beyond remaining the victims of uncontrolled breeding and the victims of those who see that as their God-given role. Uneducated, powerless women and the awful results of overpopulation became the victims of the god Mother Teresa served for the last fifty years of her life.

Mother Teresa wanted to bring people to Jesus, and in an ironic way, she brought me to Jesus, too – to his asking what good it would do if you gained the whole world and lost your soul. Christopher Hitchens wrote that she did far more harm than good, and that many more people suffered because of her work. I think it came not from a bad heart, but from very bad theology, and a nearly perverse willingness to work with the poorest of the poor while pandering to the worst of the wealthy, to fund the pyramid scheme of starting more and more missions of charity, which loved to hug the poor – as she wished for half a century that God would hug her – but never by empowering them, nor by providing decent medical care or social and political intervention on their behalf, to improve their lot in life. Instead, she told them to find Jesus and love their suffering.

But it matters a lot which concepts of “Jesus” and “God” we serve. After 1948, she served the wrong Jesus and the wrong God, and paid for it through 49 years of deep inner pain, suffering and loneliness. I see her tormenting inner voices as the voices of conscience trying to tell her she was not on a path that was bringing her life.

So what did it profit her to gain a whole world and lose her soul? She made the lot of the poor far worse by popularizing an adoration of their suffering rather than working to change the structures that continued to cause it, so that the numbers of the poor and desperate might be reduced rather than merely fawned over.

As that first century theologian said, she became what she worshiped, and inside the outward saintly face of Mother Teresa, the Saint of Calcutta, was the portrait of a lonely, unloved and tormented Albanian woman named Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhui (Gon-cha Bo-ja-tswee), abandoned by the God of life who had once loved and comforted her during the first twenty years of her career, when she was educating and empowering people rather than using them as part of the landscape to impress a God who tried to tell her for half a century that he wanted them raised up, not patronized.

I feel sorrow for the deep emptiness of this woman named Agnes, and for the plight of the ever-growing poor – a plight I think she made worse. My hope and prayer is that she might become a lesson after all, of the terrible cost of serving gods not worth serving, and the call to return to the service of life, health and empowerment of all the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. In a terribly ironic way, her life demonstrates, more than any life I know of, that you can’t fool God. You can’t serve shallow aims and find deep fulfillment. Jesus was right: we gain nothing of real value when we lose our soul, lose the sense that we are serving life, health and an empowering love.

That’s not what Mother Teresa said, but it seems to be the message her life taught, both to her and to us. If we can hear that message she could not hear, perhaps we can find the blessings she could not find. At least, that is what I hope and believe, for all.

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All page numbers in parentheses are from the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, Edited and with Commentary by Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C. (Doubleday, 2007)